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So here's a strategy that we're gonna talk about today that has been shown in research to influence the way that your brain predicts the future and thus influence your emotions. This has to do with how you remember the past. Now we can't change the past. But we can change the way that we perceive the past.
This is not about toxic positivity. This is not about pretending like everything has always been happy and everything will always be happy. It's just about being able to shift the balance of the way that your brain sees your resources in relation to the demands in your life. Because when you are feeling overwhelmed by the demands in your life, then you go into the threat response and that doesn't help you to solve your problems.

Hi everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. I wanna talk to you today about something that recent research has discovered about how your brain works that has huge implications for your anxiety levels that a lot of people don't know. People often think when they wanna change the way they feel, they think about changing their job, moving, maybe even changing their relationships, making more money, somehow changing their situation. But while changing your situation may a lot of times be a really important thing that you need to do for bettering your wellbeing in your life, on the other hand, you can change your entire situation and arrive there at your new situation and find that you still feel really anxious or you still feel really depressed, and the reason why is because you brought your brain with you. We've talked about from the beginning of this podcast about how emotion research in the last 50 years has really uncovered that our emotions are not determined by our situations. And one of the ways that we know this is that two people can have the exact same situation and be having different emotions. Emotions are really determined by the way that your brain perceives your situation. And specifically, we've talked about many times about how emotions are really based on the way that your brain predicts the future. Your brain is a asking and answering certain questions: how good or bad is this? Whose fault is it? What should I do, or how is this gonna develop? And the way that your brain answers those questions is what is going to organize your emotions. And we've talked about how specifically with the emotion of anxiety, your brain is specifically trying to analyze and predict how is it that my resources are going to interact with these demands that I'm facing right now. Are they gonna be enough or are these demands gonna overwhelm my resources? And the way that your brain predicts how your resources and demands will interact, whether or not you can do it or whether it's gonna be too much for you, depending on that prediction, that's what's going to put you in a state of anxiety or not. So we've talked about how when you, when your brain predicts that you have resources to meet the demands, even though you might have to really push and use all of your energy, that this can trigger hormones and autonomic responses that helps increase blood flow to your brain and it helps you to have better cognitive performance and helps you to feel like approaching the stressor. That's the challenge response. But if your brain instead predicts that your demands are too much for your resources, then it'll, it'll, it'll trigger different hormones and different autonomic responses, and these will make you feel like running away from the stressor. They'll actually reduce blood flow to your brain, make it harder for you to perform anything that involves thinking. And this is where we start to feel anxiety. This is the threat response. So while it can be helpful to work on our situations, it's really crucial when we're talking about getting a handle on anxiety or depression or any kind of other negative emotion that we also think about working on how our brains see our situations, and specifically about how our brains see the future, how our brains predict the future. This is really the clincher in being able to change the way that you feel.
And I wanna talk about a tool that researchers have uncovered for being able to change the way that your brain predicts the future. We've talked a couple times before about how you can't just wake up in the morning and decide, Hey, I'm gonna see everything differently from now on. I'm gonna see that my resources are enough for the demands in my life, and I'm not gonna see the demands in my life as too scary anymore, and I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna perceive things differently. It doesn't work to do things that way because a lot of these predictions that our brains make are automatic, instantaneous and really pretty unconscious and, and they're not really totally under our conscious control. So we really have to rely on research that shows us what types of strategies are gonna actually influence these unconscious processes in our brains.

So here's a strategy that we're gonna talk about today that has been shown in research to influence the way that your brain predicts the future and thus influence your emotions. It may be one that you haven't thought of before, and this has to do with how you remember the past, how you recall the past. This will change the way that your brain predicts the future. Now we can't change the past, but we can change the way that we perceive the past. We can change the meaning that we give to the past. And the reason why this might be important is because our, our memories are actually the tools that our brains use to predict the future. Our brains are always asking, "given what has happened to me before, what I've seen before, what I've heard before, what is likely to happen next?" and so our memory is actually really a prediction system. We think it's a storage system, but it's not actually a storage system. It's really a prediction system to help us to make better choices for the future. Scientists have actually figured out that the same parts of our brains that are involved in remembering and recalling events, those parts are also involved in imagining tomorrow and predicting the future. And they know this from brain scans and studies on people's memory damage. Why does this matter for anxiety management, which is what we're talking about today? Well, it's because emotions are determined or organized by our predictions of the future. Our brains are always predicting what the most probable future is and organizing an emotional response that will help us to meet that that future that our brain thinks is most prob probable. And so how we tell our stories about the past will actually influence the way that our brain predicts what will happen in the future. And the kinds of things that we rehearse in our memory system become more accessible to us and more memorable, and those types of things end up being used as building blocks for making future predictions. So here's an example. Researchers put people participating in a particular study through a short, stressful situation. And then afterward, they asked them to remember something from their own life. So one of the groups was asked to remember a positive memory, like a happy moment or a meaningful experience. And the other group was asked to just remember a neutral memory, like something ordinary that happened during their day. And what they found was that the people who remembered that positive experience, they actually ended up showing less of a stress response in their bodies in response to this stressful situation that they were all put through. Their stress hormone cortisol didn't rise as much and they reported feeling less negative emotions. But the people who had the neutral memory didn't have that same benefit. So let's look under the hood and see what was actually happening here. Those people who had recalled that positive memory, it influenced the way that their brain predicted how they could handle this stressor. And it actually produced different hormones and autonomic reactions in their bodies and gave them a different emotion, a less negative emotion compared to those people who had just remember, remembered the neutral memory. So there's an example of people remembering something positive and having it influence the way that they were predicting the future and thus influencing their bodily response and their emotional response to a stressor.
In another study, there was a group of people that had to remember positive experiences in vivid detail, and another group of people who just were remembering neutral experiences, and then they were asked to imagine outcomes for future problems. Well the group who had remembered the positive experiences in vivid detail, they were able to picture more ways that this problem might turn out okay, or even well. They didn't automatically expect the worst. And this was different than the control group. So the people who had been asked to remember these positive experiences in a lot of detail, they were thinking of more ways that this scenario might work out, even though it was currently a problem. And they weren't so worried, they weren't so scared about these possible negative outcomes that could come from the problem, ' cause they were thinking of even more positive outcomes than the other group. So there's another example of how remembering a positive experience can change the way that your brain sees what might happen in the future in response to a problem, whether it can turn out okay or whether it's just going to be a disaster. So that's interesting also, right, that your brain's predictions about what could happen will change depending on what you are practicing remembering.

In another really interesting study, the researchers recruited people who had really bad social anxiety, and they divided them into two groups. Everybody had to remember a positive social memory from their own life. A time when they felt accepted or appreciated or included by other people. And then they were asked to think about that memory in two ways. The first group was asked to write about, um, what that experience meant to them. Like what did that say about me as a person? What does it show about how other people see me? What does it mean about my ability to connect to people? And the other group they weren't, they were asked to think of this positive social memory, but they were just supposed to focus on simple details of the memory, like what the room was like, where they were that they were in, and what people were wearing in the experience and the sounds and colors around them. So this is really testing different types, different ways of remembering positive events, right, this study? After these people remembered this social experience, positive social experience, and wrote about it focusing on different types of details, then the researchers added a cha added a challenge. They were, the participants were put through a situation where they experienced, um, feeling left out by other people. They were socially excluded. And then they were asked to remember that positive social memory again, and what they found was that the people who had remembered the social experience and found meaning in it, they did a lot better than the other group who had just remembered the experience and remembered superficial details about it. The people who had thought about the meaning of that original positive memory, they had more positive emotions. They had stronger feelings of safety. They had more positive beliefs about other people and healthier beliefs about themselves in response to this social stressor of being excluded. So it actually changed their experience of social anxiety just by having giving given a meaning to a positive social memory from their past.

So just to help you to understand kind of what these people did who were looking into the meaning of their past experience: so one of the subjects was talking about a time when they were little and their dad told them that he would always be proud of them after they had finished watching a movie. And some of the things that this person, this participant wrote about what it meant was that this participant wrote that it means that my dad is proud of me. It also means that I was a good person and probably still am. It means that I should trust myself more and trust who I am. Another person had written down a social memory that was kind of more mixed because it was a time when they were crossed in love, but a good friend had stayed up with them all night to talk about it. And so what they wrote about that moment was, uh, it shows my friends care about me and will support me when needed. Maybe I'm a good person for others to love and care for, and other people may think I am a good person who's worthy of help. It means my life is not lonely and a failure, and I can count on close people when I need them. So that's just to help you to understand how these people who were thinking of this positive social memory, how they were thinking of it, how they were giving meaning to it. So those, again, those who had thought about the meaning of this positive social experience, they did a lot better in response to negative social situation, they had a lot less anxious response and a lot more positive response in general than those who had just remembered that positive social memory superficially.

So these studies tell us some really specific things. It tells us, first of all, that it can be really helpful to rehearse positive memories for ourselves, to write them down, to record them for yourself, to make an album of photos that helps you remember these different positive memories, that these are ways that re you can rehearse it in your brain. And then those rehearsals, those views of those past events will be more accessible to your brain as it is making predictions about the future, including those which determine your emotions. But not just writing about them, but also writing about what they mean, that this really maximizes that positive effect on your future predictions. It maximizes your ability to create different emotions in the face of stress.

But what about the bad memories? I mean, am I trying to say that we should ignore all of our bad memories or pretend like they didn't exist? Of course not. That wouldn't be healthy either, right? We should rehearse the positive memories because as I've said before, our brain tends to hyperfocus on threat and a lot of times we can't even remember any of the positive stuff. Our brain is only focusing on that threat, just like the Where's Waldo and the Waldo picture, even though there's tons of other information in there. So it's important to make sure there's a lot of, a lot of information in there for your brain to draw on, that the good memories are in there. But what about those bad memories? Every life contains bad memories and some of them are extremely painful. But research has shown that there is a way to look back on these memories as well that can help change your predictions of the future. That can help your predictions about the future to be more positive and thus help you to have better emotions. So specifically, when you're thinking about those bad memories, if you can find a way to look for something, some positive that came out of it, something that you learned, something that it led to, someone that you met as a result of this experience, some way that you changed, that helped you to enjoy life more. And this is what researchers call a redemptive reflection, something that puts some kind of positive outcome related to this negative, painful event. And Arthur Brooks, who is a social scientist, he writes about a, an exercise, which I thought was really interesting. She, he said in your journal, when something negative happens, go ahead and write it down right afterwards. A painful experience. Go ahead, write it down. But after that experience, leave two lines. After one month, go back to your journal and write in that first line something that you learned from that bad or painful experience in that first month. And then after six months, fill in the second line with different positive things that ultimately came from that bad experience. And he's suggesting this as a, a really powerful way to process your bad memories with this redemptive reflection. Being able to see something positive, something beneficial that came out of it. And research shows that people who are able to do this, who are able to see some kind of positive that comes out of difficult or painful or bad memories, that this helps them to feel better emotionally. Which as we know, behind the scenes, this means that their brains are making better predictions about the future or more challenge oriented predictions rather than threat oriented predictions. Their brains are making predictions about the future that are resulting in them having more positive emotions. And it also, this type of reflection on our past has also been shown to just give more wellbeing to those who engage in it. So, research is showing that looking for meaning in your painful experiences also will help influence the way your brain predicts the future and thus will influence your emotions, help you get to get out of that anxious, threat, depressed, trapped type of feeling, and in toward the approach- my- stressor, I- can- rise- to- the- challenge, I- can- handle- this type emotions.
So this is a really interesting exercise. I did it, I did it a little bit during those three years when I was sick with long COVID. I had a little paragraph after my gratitude paragraph in my notebook, I would have this paragraph about memories and I would write positive memories. I would, I would choose different topics. I would write, write a positive memory from my childhood, or I would write a positive memory from a specific relationship in my life. And I really did find that it helped me have to be able to deal with the stressors of this chronic, terrible illness that I was going through. and part of my daily journal writing includes processing difficult experiences that come to me and trying to see them from the perspective of what it is that they're giving me, what it is, what benefit is coming out of them.

But isn't this cool? I mean, it's hard to access our unconscious brains, but here's a little conscious act that we can do to consciously rehearse, recall positive memories, and think about what they mean for our lives and for about ourselves, and also when we recall painful memories, thinking about any positives that might come, might have come from those, and that this can actually change the way that our brains will predict the future. It will help us to see more positive outcomes. It'll help us to be more creative in our problem solving, and it will also help us to generate more of the type of emotions that will help us to meet our stressors with all of our equipment, with all of our brain online. And instead of feeling like we need to run away from our stressors. So again, as I've said many times before, this is not about toxic positivity. This is not about rewriting your past. This is not about pretending, pretending like everything has always been happy and everything will always be happy. It's just about being able to shift the balance of the way that your brain sees your resources in relation to the demands in your life. Because when you are feeling overwhelmed by the demands in your life and crushed by them, then you go into the threat response, and that doesn't help you to solve your problems, and it ends up usually harming your relationships, doesn't help you to deal with your stressors. Whereas if you can generate a challenge response, then you've got your maximum bodily resources to help you to solve the problems in your life and help you to meet the stressors that you face.
As I said a couple weeks ago, don't be overwhelmed by the number of strategies that I keep throwing at you in all of these episodes. You just listen to them and let them wash over you. And when you hear one that sounds interesting to you, that sounds attractive for some reason, something that sounds really valuable to you, or something that you feel like would be natural or enjoyable for you, then start working with that one. But even just the act of listening to what this strategy is and how it has helped other people will already start to work in your brain. And there will be moments when you will be able to use this strategy when it will help you just because you've listened to it. So don't stress out about having to implement everything all at once. Just work on trying to understand what this strategy is about why it works. And maybe find one little way to practice it this week. Maybe one day this week think about one positive memory from your life and what it means, and one painful memory from your life and something positive that came out of it.

So that's my challenge for you today. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.